Daily Archives: August 27, 2012

Posted onAugust 27, 2012|Comments Off on What high net worth trends say about the future of frontier markets

There’s a lot to contemplate in the recently released 2012 Wealth Report from Knight Frank and Citi Private Bank, particularly for anyone whose customer base lies in high net worth, property or both. My interest is not necessarily in those spaces, but more in the environmental factors surrounding those spaces, starting with this succession of charts:

The most glaring thing here is Europe making up nine of the bottom 10 countries for economic growth between now and 2050.

Second most glaring thing: the absence of Brazil, Russia and China entirely from tables 2 or 3 and India only mattering as far as economic growth is concerned. If this isn’t an argument for the complete idiocy of the BRIC acronym, I don’t know what is.

Third: every one of the top 10 economic growth countries between now and 2050 (table 2) is by any definition poor today and extremely challenging to conduct business in. They also are overwhelmingly saddled with natural resources.Continue reading →

“The number of possible permutations of what is really going on right now at the highest echelons of Egyptian power politics is difficult to calculate. On the one side, some speculate that Morsi “retired” Tantawi and Anan to preempt their own attempts further to delegitimise and undermine his presidency and perhaps even scuttle it altogether with a series of pro-SCAF/anti-Brotherhood protests that have been scheduled for later this month. Call it a presidential coup d’etat against the army – the reverse of the usual course of events.” — Mark Levine in Al-Jazeera
The Politically Incorrect Guide to U.S. Interests in the Middle East — Foreign Policy
Glencore boasts about how much money they’ll make from a food drought — The Independent (UK)
Black Market gold trading booms in the Philippines — Reuters via Business StandardContinue reading →